


Ghosts of Dawn

by gentlezombie



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/pseuds/gentlezombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night at the barricade, recounted by Corfeyrac: a fourth-wall-shattering piece of remembrance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of Dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilgenious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilgenious/gifts).



> Happy Yule, lilgenious!

A friend of mine said, not all that long ago, that those who die for the future enter the bright light of dawn. Perhaps it was only a metaphor – he was making a speech after all – but I think that in the rustling darkness of the night some of us might have believed him. All the same, it is dark here, and I fear all my witty turns of phrase have deserted me.

There are some bits and pieces I want to tell you before I forget, if only to voice the memories to myself and the airy phantoms. There are those who are worthy of remembrance, and a great many of them were at the barricades in 1832. There were men at the barricade, some of whom might have been villains; there might have been a god or two lurking in the lantern-lit gloom. But all of them were my brothers, and some of them were my friends. Having almost devoted myself to law, I want to see justice done for them. At the very least, I hope to offer them some last amusement. 

I understand all of this has been or will be told, and by a tongue more eloquent than mine. Old Vic knows many things. Some things he chooses to ignore, and others don't even enter that great consciousness, being trivial and mundane in the course of great events. A tale of trivialities for you, then, as a eulogy for my friends. 

***

A barricade is a grand thing, a dream, but you have to take care not to let it turn into a nightmare. When I did not find Enjolras at the barricade in the rue de la Chanvrerie nor spot him by the light of the paper lantern at the small barricade, I went inside the Corinth to look for him. That was not entirely unselfish on my part. After the loss of two of our friends that day, I felt a need to keep track of the rest, like some little shepherdess in a Greek pastoral. Laugh if you wish. I like laughter much better than grim faces. 

I felt the sharp eyes of the prisoner on me as I progressed further into the insides of the tavern, past the wounded and the dead. I thought our leader might have found some task there. At last I found him in a small room that had been until recently used as a storage. Now the sacks and barrels had been rolled outside to fortify the barricade.

I saw him from the doorway and nearly turned back, startled. In this moment of respite, away from the tumult and the glory, Enjolras looked indescribably lost. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest in an embrace that he had never received from a lover. Unguarded, without the glorious aura of the future about him, he seemed suddenly very young to me. He was staring at some point in the wall – not deep in thought, but rather without any thought at all.

He was certainly unaware of my presence, and I realised I had never seen him truly alone. He was always with us, making speeches, drafting plans, watching over the efforts of us lesser mortals. Even when spotted alone on a street, he was on his way to a meeting, purpose in his stride.

I had thought he tolerated us, fondly perhaps, because we were instruments of his revolution. I had not understood that he needed us, an audience, a willing ear. Conviction alone was not enough. He needed us to let that light of the future shine. Without an audience a prophet is just another lunatic. How strange it is that the one who often disdains others for their petty faults should be the one who needs their company the most. How incredibly frustrating that must be for him!

Still, this was not the time for such somber thoughts. I knocked on the doorframe to alert him to my presence. No need to let him know how long I had been watching him. He looked up at me, and I fancied there was a kind of relief on his face before the smoothness of marble took over once more.

“Come sit with us,” I told him. “We need someone to cast some valour into this lot. I fear they are reciting poetry.”

“Something must be done about that,” he said with a hint of a smile. He disentangled his thin fingers from the fabric of his jacket where they had dug deep grooves, straightened his shoulders and walked past me. Passing the people who were tending to the wounded and the ones making cartridges, his bearing grew more certain with every step. When we walked outside, he was once again the unreachable beauty we all knew and loved. A couple of salutes and he would become the very spirit of battle.

In truth, our friends were not reciting poetry now, but the conversation was flowing and ebbing between them like it so often had in one tavern or other. Enjolras and I sat down in their midst. 

Joly and Bossuet were commiserating over Musichetta, whom they did not believe they would see again.

“What a temper she had! And such beautiful hands,” Joly said wistfully. 

“She was a lovely little fiend,” Bossuet agreed with less reverence. “Even better, she had no jealous male friends. Those are an eternal curse of mine.”

“ _I_ should have been the jealous male friend.”

“It is very good that you are not thusly cursed. Jealousy is ugly.” 

“I’m rather certain those fellows think your mug is ugly, when you greet them at the door of their pretty grisette.”

“What sharp words! One might almost feel hurt. I shudder to think of your bedside manner.”

“Then it is fortunate I’m not much of a doctor.”

Combeferre, who had begun a discussion on the finer points of progress and hot air balloons with Enjolras, turned to lay a hand on Joly’s shoulder.

“He feels guilty for not being able to do more here,” he whispered to me. “I’ve told him it does not require much skill to slap on a bandage or to set a bone, not half as much as recognising ten tropical diseases by the colour of the tongue, but he refuses to listen.”

Joly and Bossuet continued to talk with lowered voices. Hearing the words “petticoat” and “garter” and “breeches, can you believe that!” I was satisfied that Bossuet’s unshakeable good cheer would eventually cure Joly of his melancholy. I turned my attention to Combeferre and Enjolras.

“It will not be long now before a method of steering is discovered. I wish I had seen that griffin tamed,” Combeferre was saying. For him, the hot air balloon was a symbol of the future. 

“You may yet see that,” I said.

“It is very unlikely,” Combeferre said without much emotion. He seemed to accept the reality of the situation with his usual calm.

“Soon we’ll wish for one to take us out of here.”

“No, we won’t,” Enjolras said with all the conviction of an ancient hero whose fate has been set by the gods. I hid a smile at that. We were lucky indeed to have a leader who never wavered. 

“You’re right,” said Combeferre. 

“I, too, would not wish to leave you,” I sighed. “Although I soon will, if you continue with this gloom and doom!”

“It is because we’re lacking poetry that we must make up tragedies of our own.”

A moment of silence followed. It was true that we were missing Jean Prouvaire’s gentle charm, unobtrusive when present but keenly felt when not there to soften the sharper edges of conversation. 

“Those brutes have no appreciation for poetry,” I said. “That alone proves that we’re in the right.”

“Do you think he tried his verses on them?” Bossuet asked.

“He might have.” We had heard gunshots, not stanzas, but that would have been very much like him. The quiet one, the gentle one, but full of surprising steel when you least expected it. “Perhaps that’s why they shot him. That makes it easy to hate the cold-hearted fiends.”

Combeferre said something disapproving, but speaking of one missing friend made me think of all the others. Bahorel would have been frustrated at all this waiting and sitting around. He would have found something to do instead of sharing morbidities. Perhaps Marius would have agreed with him, because he had been so quiet that I had almost forgotten his presence.

“Marius, you are in love. Surely you want to die least of all. Could you not tell us something of this mysterious angel, this goddess of yours?”

He blinked, then stared at me with an expression that told me he could not be shaken from whatever strange conviction he had in his head. His stubbornness had always bordered on the fanatical. “You are wrong, Corfeyrac.”

“Is that all? I am wrong? No revelations, no shared love poems?” I was perhaps wrong to tease him, but I felt that under the circumstances revelations were in order. He merely shook his head and refused to speak any further on the subject.

“We haven’t seen Marius at all lately,” Joly piped up. “Corfeyrac, tell us what he’s been up to. He refuses to tell us anything, and soon I’ll be forced to diagnose him with something or other.” 

“We would not want that,” I laughed. “I shall outline the symptoms and you can judge for yourself if there is any diagnosis other than love.”

“It is an ailment of the mind and body, albeit a pleasant one.”

“And I should be happy to be suffering from it. But our friend here is most certainly not happy. He had work, an occupation, an apartment and an orderly life. Now he has abandoned everything, sleeps on a mattress in yours truly’s room, when he sleeps at all, for mostly he is sighing and groaning in a most worrying manner. Now if he had finally become sick of his Spartan existence and decided to live off his friends and drink all his money, why I would have been ecstatic for him. But this is not doing any good for him or my poor heart that I fear shall soon shatter to pieces.”

“That is serious indeed,” Joly said. “A life of leisure would be quite in order for some of us, but when it comes to Marius it is ominous.”

“It must be love, or else he is still mortified after the little incident with the editor of the magazine.” 

“What incident? I must be aware of all the facts relating to the patient, you know,” Joly said with great interest. Marius frowned at us.

“Apparently there was quite an innocent article on botany that was to be translated from English. Our friend in love here, his head full of cotton and stars, made some errors in judgment and above all in vocabulary and grammar. The result was that the editor was questioned about the vile piece of propaganda he had published which not only contained poorly hidden political messages but was also an affront to good taste. Naturally, he was not too happy about that; I have heard terrible rumours of him chasing our dear fellow here out of the house and chasing him down the street, armed with a broom.”

“I thought that was the sort of thing that could only happen to me,” Bossuet exclaimed.

“Corfeyrac, be quiet!” Marius said. His face was red, but he looked much more alive than the poor phantom I had been observing for the past hours.

“Very well, because it is you who asks, and you did save my life today. I need someone else to bother; where is Feuilly? He is not here with us.”

“He is at the little barricade,” Combeferre said. “He was not in the mood for talking.”

“I asked him to stay when he passed us, but he only threw this at me, saying that he was finally done with it all,” Bossuet said.

Of all things, he was holding a fan in his hand. It was badly charred, but one could still make out the floral designs on the cheap paper. I could well imagine Feuilly offering the little, fragile trinket to the flame of the lantern and watching it eat away the fruit of the toil he hated.

“I knew he disliked working at the factory, but I never took him for one for such gestures.”

“I think he is disappointed at not seeing more of his fellow workers here,” Combeferre said. “He is in a black mood, saying that they are doing nothing to gain their freedom. That is quite unusual for him.”

“They did not care for his lessons in history, then. But I see we are missing one more sheep. Where is Grantaire, our black sheep who might as well be burgundy from all the wine he’s been soaked in? Where’s the old skeptic?”

“Sleeping,” Enjolras said curtly. “I told him to leave, but the drunkard wouldn’t listen.”

“Will you go wake him?”

“No. If he has not woken up by now, he isn’t going to.” And he added at no one in particular: “God knows he’s had his chances.”

I thought there might be something there plain to see; but I was quite certain Enjolras did not see it, and all of Grantaire’s visions tended to be brought forth by absinthe, forgotten in the merciless light of morning. We let him sleep.

And so our conversation meandered from nothing to everything, from the gutter to the stars. As long as we were talking, the night was not dark. Finally I returned us to the subject of Jean Prouvaire.

“Do you remember Jehan’s poem, about chestnuts?”

“I believe it was on the theme of love,” Combeferre said with a smile.

“Yes, but we have already covered love too many times tonight. If you go on, I shall be tempted to do something inappropriate. But if you promise not to recount any more love stories, tragic or happy, I believe I have a bag of chestnuts in my pocket.”

That was a cause of the utmost joy for our brave warriors who had not eaten since the meagre scraps offered by the tavern had run out. Naturally, Enjolras insisted that they should be shared equally between everyone, and there was some dispute over whether it was disrespectful to roast chestnuts at the barricade.

I did not intervene but watched them all with a smile. I know they think my love a frivolous thing. No matter. The knowledge of it keeps me warm. In a few short hours, we shall all be gone.

***

Death grants one perspective. There are new wars to come, new revolutions to celebrate, but our revolution has already passed us by. None of us will see the light and darkness to come. And this little tale told, it is time for me to be moving on. I am not alone, after all.

Everything is languid and distorted in this place, but I see Bahorel beckoning for me; his waistcoat is as unfortunate as always. Grantaire is there, which surprises me; I did not see him fall. There is something different about him, some shadow that has left him now that he is but a shadow himself. Alive, I never saw him happy. Bossuet, Joly, Feuilly, Jean Prouvaire, they are all waiting for me. 

And he is there, naturally, our Apollo whose light shone brightly but not brightly enough. His disdainful lower lip tells me that he is irritated at my tardiness. I must join then; I want to. I am already closer to them than to anything I may have left behind. As usual, Enjolras is the first among us, leading us off into the mist of futures to come. Faithful shadows, we follow.

**Author's Note:**

> I am only familiar with a non-English translation and the 2008 Julie Rose translation; this may show somewhat in the language, if you're accustomed to the older translations.
> 
> Thanks to AntigravityDevice for beta and general reassurances ♥


End file.
